The Army and Hololens

There's a lot here.

Reading between the lines, there's a notable benefits of a laser display (and further evidence of a laser display.)

Better equipment is a deterrent.

The Verge
CNBC
Gizmodo
C|NET

Night vision goggles currently used in the field emit a green glow, which the enemy can see. IVAS doesn’t glow as much, and still allows soldiers to see other people in the dark.  

(Only uses the light required to deliver information to the user -- no glow -- lasers.)

When I tried it, people glowed bright white, as if everyone in the room had suddenly turned into ghosts. With the lights off, I could see someone standing plainly behind a set of ferns, which I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise.

McCarthy explained, “With current night vision, smoke can blur what you see. With thermal, you can see through the smoke and engage and destroy a threat. This is a game changer on the battlefield,” he said, noting that Russia, China and other potential adversaries that know about these capabilities “will not want to engage us.”  

(Deterrence!)

And This is going to be very good attention for MVIS.

I’m inside a Black Hawk helicopter flying from the Pentagon to Fort Pickett, Virginia.

I’m flying with Under Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy and Command Sgt. Maj. Michael A. Crosby, who are explaining how Microsoft’s technology will be used to better train soldiers and make them more effective in the real world. Soon, I’ll see for myself.

The Army recently invited CNBC to see how it will use specially modified Microsoft HoloLens 2 headsets. They’re part of a $480 million defense contract won by the company. The military wouldn’t say how much its version costs, but the consumer one costs $3,500.

US ARMY Hololens

Hololens to Army, Bloomberg

Microsoft Corp. has won a $480 million contract to supply prototypes for augmented reality systems to the Army for use on combat missions and in training, the Army said. The contract, which could eventually lead to the military purchasing over 100,000 headsets, is intended to “increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy,” according to a government description of the program.

"Augmented reality technology will provide troops with more and better information to make decisions. This new work extends our longstanding, trusted relationship with the Department of Defense to this new area,” a Microsoft spokesman said in an emailed statement.

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The U.S. Army and the Israeli military have already used Microsoft’s HoloLens devices in training, but plans for live combat would be a significant step forward.

HoloLens is one of the leading consumer-grade headsets, but a large consumer market doesn’t yet exist; a video made for the European Patent Office this spring said it had sold about 50,000 devices. That’s about half the number the Army expects to buy through its augmented reality program, which is called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS.

With the contract, the Army immediately becomes one of Microsoft’s most important HoloLens consumers. It expects devices to vary from their consumer-grade counterparts in a handful of key respects. In a document shared with companies bidding on the contract, the Army said it wanted to incorporate night vision and thermal sensing, measure vital signs like breathing and “readiness,” monitor for concussions and offer hearing protection. It said the winning bidder would be expected to deliver 2,500 headsets within two years, and exhibit the capacity for full-scale production.

Tactical Augmented Reality

The video is a little cartoonish, but this is very interesting and very promising. 

This is a space that Microvision has been active with in the past. They have had contracts to develop this kind of technology with the likes of Lockheed Martin. 

NOMAD was displayed at CES 2016.  (It outclassed other AR displays I saw there.)

OLD NOMAD ARTICLE 

The issues they had to "overcome" (highlighted below) Picop is certainly able to do...



Microvision / Lockheed Martin

US ARMY

WASHINGTON (Army News Service) -- A novel technology called "Tactical Augmented Reality," or TAR, is now helping Soldiers precisely locate their positions, as well as the locations of friends and foes, said Richard Nabors. 

It even enables them to see in the dark, all with a heads-up display device that looks like night-vision goggles, or NGV, he added. So in essence, TAR replaces NVG, GPS, plus it does much more.

Nabors, an associate for strategic planning at U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, or CERDEC, spoke about TAR at the Pentagon's Lab Day, Thursday.

Geek

The key, according to electronics engineer David Fellowes, was miniaturizing the image to fit the one-inch screen. Existing tech can compress pixels enough to fit on a smartphone-sized window. But CERDEC’s main challenge was creating new hardware to meet their needs.

By 2010, the department achieved that goal, creating a system that works in black-and-white and a greenish monochrome, which has already been fielded in certain units.

And while those versions are bright enough to be seen in daylight, CERDEC wants to produce more advanced models in full color, with an advanced brightness display.

“TARs will provide soldiers with a much higher level of situational awareness than they currently have,” Fellowes said, adding that he expects the devices will “save lives and contribute to mission success.”